Cannot Falter

Obviously, IU fans have had lots of opinions about John Calipari, but they basically fall into three categories:

• “Kentucky is awfully excited over a guy who has never coached in a major conference.”
• “We’re screwed.”
• “Where do I place my bet in the Kentucky Basketball Probation Pool?”

It’s the third one that has Kentucky fans a little rankled. Their theory seems to be that since IU Basketball was involved in a major infractions case, IU fans have lost the right to question the integrity of Kentucky Basketball. I beg to differ, and I’ll have to put on my Bill Simmons analogy hat to do so.
Continue reading ‘Why IU fans can slam the Calipari hire’

Jason Whitlock apparently lives in La-La Land, a place where up is down, left is right, the bartender is drunk and the patrons are sober. Because in Whitlock’s world, coaches who follow the rules are the bad guys and the cheaters are the white knights.

The only ethical/moral thing for a wealthy Division I men’s basketball coach to do is circumvent the NCAA rulebook. Any coach falsely pious enough to waste much time pretending that he follows NCAA rules is a coach I have little use or respect for.

You can make just about any argument for this article that you want, it doesn’t stand up. At best, it’s poorly written. At worse, the premise of the article is flat out wrong.

Continue reading ‘Let’s come clean about columnists’

Over the past couple years, the Indiana and Kentucky jobs have clearly been reestablished as two of the most difficult in the country. All of the blue blood jobs like IU, UK, Kansas, UCLA, Duke, and UNC are difficult. But it’s starting to seem like IU and UK are a little harder than the others.

Generally, at UCLA, UNC, and Kansas, they just care that you win. (The jury is still out on Duke since only no coach other than Mike Krzyzewski has been really successful at Duke. My guess is that Duke fans will demand that the coach at least maintain the illusion of higher academic standards.) At IU and UK though, something more is demanded.
Continue reading ‘The IU Job and the Kentucky Job’

Whew. So a couple weeks ago I took the bar exam, then basically didn’t want to sit down and do thinking/writing work that wasn’t required by my job. Maybe during the basketball season is a bad time to do that, but you can get news and analysis from a lot of people more qualified than I (with the main qualification being easy access to view every game).

But now the Big Ten Tournament (BTT for those of you in the know) is upon us and IU will take on Penn State today. Penn State is firmly on the bubble. They appeared to jump to safety with their thrilling win against Illinois, but then fell right back on the bubble with an overtime loss to IU’s fellow Big Ten cellar dweller Iowa. Back to back losses to Iowa and IU would likely burst PSU’s bubble. And according to Terry Hutchens, IU is the team no one wants to play.

Tip is at 5:00 PM Eastern on the Big Ten Network. Leave thoughts below.

It was about a year ago that the other shoe fell. Granted, for many people, the other shoe probably fell just after Midnight Madness in 2007, when the initial infractions report on Kelvin Sampson’s continued misdeeds leaked out. But for me, it was on a Wednesday in February when the NCAA levied major violations against IU that I truly realized what IU had done. The common perception is that Bob Knight ran a clean program. While there’s no denying that, Indiana ran just as clean a program. We’re talking about a school that was coming up on 50 years without a major violation in any sport. That’s about 20 years longer than any other school in the Big Ten, a conference with a reputation for rules compliance.

That lead to the single more surreal week I’ve ever experienced as a sports fan. I skipped class that afternoon, watched IU lose a heartbreaker to Wisconsin that just felt fitting. Then there was Gameday’s trip to Bloomington, where the fans got their say in against Sampson and then wanted to focus on the team. And after the big win against Purdue, I had a drink at the Jungle Room and felt emotionally drained. Almost a shell of a fan. It’s not the fondest memory, but it’s sort of like a near death experience as a fan. You cherish the memory because it makes the good times that much better.

Now one year later, ESPN has a few articles looking at the situation. One is a short piece on five players affected by Sampson, none of whom ever played at IU. Two are from Ryan of Inside the Hall, the first an excellent piece looking back at Sampson that captures a lot of what IU fans felt about Sampson and how quickly it changed and the second a more lighthearted piece looking at four other things touched by Sampson. But the fourth is my favorite. The last two I mentioned are Insider articles, but I can’t resist quoting from this one. In it, ESPN talked with Brandon McGee and Armon Bassett. McGee had this to say about Gordon’s “news” that drug use was a divisive force on the IU team:

Gordon even went as far as to say it wasn’t D.J. White or the players who stayed at Indiana that had the drug problem. He made it clear: it was the guys who left. It wasn’t hard for McGee or anyone else to figure out whom Gordon was talking about. “You look at our team, three guys form Chicago, Jordan from Detroit, we were all a bunch of kids from the inner-city, people not from the best cities,” said McGee. “He singled everyone out that wasn’t from Carmel, Indiana. They just stereotyped it. It made everybody think it was true.”

Brandon’s comments are required reading for IU fans. If you can somehow read the whole article, make it a point to. Brandon points out two big flaws of IU fans.

First, IU fans are extremely mistrusting of outsiders. That means outside the family, outside the state, outside of the romantic vision of IU basketball. And inner city kids from Detroit and Chicago are outsiders. That’s not to say that IU fans can’t learn to love a player, just look at DJ White. But also look at Eric Gordon, who bolted for the NBA like everyone expected and isn’t exactly the most loved IU player despite doing, at least in my opinion, all that could reasonably be asked of him.

Second, IU fans are also love their discipline. A coach isn’t coaching unless he’s yelling and screaming. A coach isn’t teaching unless he’s dragging the slow learners kicking and screaming. A coach isn’t doing his job unless he’s showing who is in control. And ultimate expression of a coach’s control? Dismissing a player from the team.

In reality, all these are failures. They do not reflect well on anybody, Crean included. Crean’s triumph is the work he did to even clean up as much of the situation as he did. A lot of people said that the parade out of Bloomington made them feel like IU was back on the right track. I didn’t. I felt it was just the program hitting rock bottom because it could pull itself out of the hole. So let’s just be happy that, so far, things look better, and hope the guys that left seize an opportunity to do better, on and off the court, than they may have done at IU.

I briefly considered giving this “Walk-On” treatment, but that’s basically what it got from The Scoop, and from Basketblog, so I’ll go a little more in depth.

Normally, I would get fired up about a columnist basically saying that IU is done. And not done for a while, like done permanently. Especially when that columnist basically takes IU to task for firing Kelvin Sampson:

For those waiting for a resurgence in Indiana basketball: It ain’t going to happen anytime soon. The system’s not designed for sleepy backwaters like Bloomington, Indiana, to have powerhouse teams in the revenue sports unless there’s a great coach to draw them in, or a coach who’s willing to play fast and loose with recruiting rules. Indiana had the latter with Kelvin Sampson, and they’re still looking for the former. Tom Crean — even though he hasn’t really had a chance to prove what he can do with his own players — isn’t the answer. Have you been to Bloomington? What multi-talented player is going to go there to play for Tom Crean?

“The system” though also puts Indiana on national TV numerous times during the worst season in school history. And the smoking gun that you can stick a fork into the infinite future of the IU Basketball program: Tom Crean didn’t act like Bob Knight would have vis-a-vie Devan Dumes:

There was a time when a previous red-sweatered coach wouldn’t have waited until mid-February to iron out the personality wrinkles in his best offensive player. It would have been no later than Nov. 1 that Mr. Dumes would have either been a.) Walking back to campus from somewhere in Iowa; b.) “grip tightening around neck *choke!* … can’t breathe …” or c.) playing for Ohio State.

So apparently, Tom Crean will fail both because he isn’t dirty or glamorous enough for “the system”, and because he doesn’t act enough like a guy who clearly didn’t fit into the system? Color me confused.

Oh wait, that’s right. Deadspin is run by a bunch of Illinois fans who feel the need to create and build some artificial rivalry. Well-played gentlemen, you sucked me for at least a few minutes.

IU takes on Illinois today in what many are calling a big rivalry game. Maybe because Purdue doesn’t come to town this year? I don’t know. Anyway, Illinois has rebounded nicely from a dismal 2007-2008 campaign which saw them miss the tournament, get beat twice by IU when seeking revenge (including not just a dagger but a dagger to the groin by Eric Gordon), and get tsk-tsked for Chester Fraizer’s antics and for finally realizing what the rest of the world seemed to know about Jamar Smith.

All that said, I don’t really buy this rivalry. I think when rivalries are in their infancy, you need a back and forth. There was no back and forth in 2007-2008. IU, with Gordon, scored two wins against the Illini, and Illinois wasn’t on the highest of moral high ground either. If IU really is an elite program, then it shouldn’t get dragged into this rivalry, the same way Nebraska football was dragged into their rivalry with Colorado.

Tip is 1:00 PM EST, 10:00 AM Pacific.

Don’t expect much vengeance for the 103-74 beat down IU suffered at the Breslin Center last year. Michigan State comes in off an impressive defeat of Minnesota, but also on notice having lost for the first time at home to both Northwestern and Penn State. At least IU is off the schneid in the Big Ten. Best case scenario is probably for Matt Roth to drop a few long threes in and keep it respectable.

One day we’ll be sick of hearing about Tom Crean and Tom Izzo’s connections before every IU/Michigan State game. This is not that day, since both teams would really have to be competitive to have that sort of gushing media barrage. The story today will be whether Izzo calls off the dogs against Crean.

Tip is at 4:00 EST, 1:00 Pacific. Leave it in the comments.

And you thought the four and five game losing streaks under Mike Davis were bad. After a long 11 game losing streak, IU has finally won a game. It wasn’t behind a dominating performance by Tom Pritchard or a bunch of bombs from Matt Roth. Rather it was Devan Dumes with a great shooting night, going 8-9 from the field, 5-5 from three, and 6-8 from the line, not to mention a nice night from Nick Williams who added 14. You can find other thoughts on the game itself over at Inside the Hall or the Hoosier Report, but I want to look big picture by looking at Devan Dumes.

The oversigning for next year continues to nag in the back of IU fans’ minds. Unless the highly, highly unlikely happens and Jeremiah Rivers pays his own freight, someone currently on the team is not going to be on the team next year. That means that after almost every game, especially loses that cause a search for the light at the end of the tunnel, fans are looking for clues about who might be the odd man out.

The point here is that you cannot possibly tell who is solidifying a spot in the rotation next year, and who is on their way out the door. These players are so inconsistent, due to their youth and lack of experience, that it’s impossible to really gauge who is getting it and who isn’t at any one time. After this game, should we all expect Pritchard to be packing his bags?

So let’s just get through this season, enjoy it as much as we can, not get frustrated or upset about anything, and just see what happens between the end of this season and the start of next season after next season.

IU returns home after a heartbreaking loss to Northwestern in Chicago, and will attempt to avenge their 24-point loss to Ohio State early this month. Ohio State is coming off an impressive home win against a spry looking Michigan squad (I think all Jon Beilein teams can be called “spry”), and is looking to vault up into the rankings, especially now that Michigan State is the only ranked Big Ten team (although Minnesota, Ohio State, and Illinois are all sort of hanging around the top 40-45 teams).

IU needs to keep up the hot shooting. It’s a measure of this season that IU is 20-38 (52%) from behind the arc in the last two games, yet lost both. Then again, that’s what it takes for this team to be competitive against the good big ten teams at home and the bad Big Ten teams on the road.

Tip is at 4:00 ET, 1:00 PT on ESPN2. I’m gonna just let you guys leave your comments here, in the comments.